iRacing has the reputation of being expensive. But how much does it really cost?
When you’re starting with esports racing, you’ll get in touch with iRacing one day. iRacing is considered one of the best racing simulations and a lot of professional race drivers like Max Verstappen play the game regularly.
But there is something that separates iRacing from most other racing games: It’s pricing policy can be very confusing. What do you have to pay to play? How expensive is iRacing really?
The Minimum
We start with the very basics. Let’s say you want to try out iRacing for the first time and see how you like it. To get into the driver’s seat you have to get a membership for at least a month which costs $13. Without any further costs, you can now start the engines. At the moment there are 26 cars included to every membership, from Dirt Cars like the Ford ’34 Coupe to high tech racing cars like the Riley Mk XX Daytona Prototype.
So now let’s get on track! There are 21 laser-scanned tracks you can immediately drive on, including legendary places such as Silverstone and Daytona International Speedway.
You also have to pay no additional costs to compete in online races or tournaments. But there can be limitations for you here. If you want to take part in a race or tournament that is being driven on a track not included in your basic membership, you will have to purchase it. The same thing goes for cars.
Getting upgrades
After you spent some time on iRacing there will certainly be the point where you want to extend your collection. A great thing about iRacing is you don’t have to pay for content you don’t want. Whether you love Formula 1, NASCAR, or IndyCar, you can just choose between your preferences when it comes to cars and tracks. A track costs either $11.95 or $14.95 in iRacing, depending on how much effort the developers had to put into laser-scanning the track. Cars are always at $11.95.
However, if you want to race in certain cups or tournaments you might have to buy some more tracks. In this case iRacing offers you discounts if you buy several content pieces at once. Those discounts are:
• 10% discount if you buy three cars or more
• 15% discount if you buy six cars or more
• 20% discount on all future purchases if you bought a total of 40 or more cars
• Own everything? You will get a 30% discount on all future content purchases
iRacing also features several special offers from time to time. Keep your eyes open for those and use the standard discounts to minimise your expenses.
If you started buying extra content, chances are pretty high you will get stuck with iRacing for a long time, trust us. As always with subscriptions, fees will get more cost-effective if you sign up for a longer time, so you might want to lower your monthly costs by getting a long-term membership.
The standard costs for iRacing memberships are:
• $13 for one month ($13/month)
• $33 for three months ($11/month)
• $110 for one year ($9.17/month)
• $199 for two years ($8.29/month)
Like with cars and tracks, there will sometimes be discounts for memberships.
What is the maximum cost?
Let’s get to real business now. You want to own everything. Every track, configuration, and car available. What will that cost you?
We start with the cars. Besides your 26 starter cars there are 68 cars you can buy at the moment. We buy 42 cars for $11.95 and get a 15% discount granted by iRacing for each car. This is actually cheaper than just buying 40 cars to immediately unlock to the 20% discount, since we would have to buy car 37-40 without a discount then.
We now get the discount of 20% for all other purchases, which makes the remaining 26 cars cheaper for us. In the end, we spend $675.18.
Let’s go on with the tracks. There are currently 80 tracks you can purchase in iRacing. Spa-Francorchamps, Le Mans, the Nordschleife – we buy ‘em all. We still have our discount of 20% active and tracks cost either $14.95 or $11.95. After adding everything to the cart we have to pay $873.68 for all the tracks.
All in all, our bill grew pretty big: If you want to own everything currently available on iRacing, you have to pay $1.548.86, excluded your membership.
Those numbers shouldn’t discourage you from getting started with iRacing. As we said before, the great thing about iRacing is that you only have to buy what you really want. Also, iRacing offers a lot of bundles and special offers. Look out for those and watch your collection grow without too many expenses.
Of course, prices and discounts can change from time to time and more items will be added to the shop. This calculation was done on March 25, 2020.
Images source: iRacing
